


To Steal a Moment

by ravenbringslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Sibling Incest, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 09:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17342531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: The first scene in Infinity War happens, but not the way you think.





	To Steal a Moment

**Author's Note:**

> I initially wrote this for the "at dawn" thorki zine and didn't end up using it because it really needed just a few more words than the zine format would allow...so I expanded it by about 800 words and present it to you here

Loki raced to the last escape pod, heart pounding, as the ship shuddered and shook around him. His part in their hastily concocted plan was over. Banner’s monster was dealing with Thanos, and if everything went the way it was supposed to, the creature would be showing up shortly with Thor and Heimdall and they could all get the hell off of this floating death trap.

Of course, nothing went the way it was supposed to. Few of Loki’s plans ever did. Throw him in the water and he would figure out how to swim, but let him try to construct a raft first and it would sink like a stone every time.

He was the only one who showed up at the rendezvous point. He waited for three agonizingly long minutes, counting his heartbeats, the terror mounting in his veins like sap climbing a tree. The sounds of fighting ceased. Then, impossibly, Loki heard the crack of the Bifrost.

“No, no, no,” he muttered to himself. Casting a silencing spell on his feet, he stole back down the corridor like a shadow. He stopped at the end, still hidden, and the tableau laid out before him froze the breath in his lungs. Banner’s monster was nowhere to be found. Heimdall lay dead, his eyes open til the last and yet, finally, unseeing. And Thor—brave, dear, stupid Thor—was bound and gagged in a metal cage, unable to free himself, the Mad Titan standing before him with a glowing stone on one hand and the Tesseract cube held lightly in the other.

Loki had been in a similar position, once. A mixture of cold dread and sickening certainty settled into his gut. Thanos was going to hurt Thor. Thanos was going to break him. Kill him.

But not if he got a chance to do it to Loki first. 

Thanos did everything by halves—never thinking anything through to the end, living life incompletely and ending it the same way. Everything divided, nothing whole. And what were Thor and Loki if not two halves of a whole? Loki had railed against it for so long, but there was no point in denying it now. He’d give his half, and the bargain would be complete.

His life for Thor’s was a trade Loki would make every time.

Suddenly shaky, Loki took a deep breath to steady himself. Thor would get over this; he’d had enough practice at it. The words Loki was going to say were already playing in his head. His feet didn’t want to move, but somehow he made them, and he had just taken his first step towards death when a strong hand came out of nowhere, closed around his upper arm, and stopped him.

Startled, Loki whipped around. He’d thought he was the only survivor left on the ship. He didn’t know who he expected to see grabbing at him, but if he’d been forced to make a list, Thor would have been at the bottom of it. And yet, it was Thor. Or seemed to be.

Loki’s eyes darted between this Thor holding his arm and the other Thor, the real Thor, still in Thanos’s metal cage. The scene in the hangar had frozen: Thor glaring at Thanos, his face caught mid-blink; Thanos crushing the Tesseract, the cube deformed in his fist; the ash that had been falling like snow suspended in the air, unmoving.

“What—” Loki started, but his brain finally caught up with all the details his eyes had furiously been taking in. This Thor holding his arm was different from the one out there. He had two eyes, for starters, though one of them was brown, and they were opened wide in desperation. The lines in his face were more deeply etched. His hair was longer and shaggy, brushing the tips of his earlobes. His shoulders were bowed with the weight of something that Loki’s Thor wasn’t carrying.

“You have to come with me,” this Thor whispered frantically, his grip on Loki’s arm urgent and rough. “I know what you’re about to do, and you still need to do it, because it’s the only way we can beat him. But please, brother, send a double to do it, and _come with me_.”

“You’re speaking nonsense,” Loki hissed. “Who are you?”

“Loki, please, it’s me. I—” He choked for a moment, and dug his fingers into Loki’s arm even more tightly. “I came here from half a year in your future. I used the Time Stone to come back and get you. I can explain later. But we have to go. Send a double out there. I can’t watch you die again, I can’t, I can’t, I—”

Though Loki had been expecting to die, it was a bit of a shock hearing it spoken about as though it had already happened. Even so, a terrible, wonderful, awful hope began blooming in Loki’s chest. The Time Stone. He had seen it around that two-bit Earth sorcerer’s neck. It might not be impossible.

Silently, he cast an illusion-banishing spell, and another one that he often used to break enchantments of a more general nature. When there proved to be no illusions or enchantments on this Thor’s person, he quickly cast a third, a childish thing but effective, that made someone glow if they harbored ill intentions toward the caster. Thor remained stubbornly unglowing.

“Prove it’s you,” Loki whispered, fiercely. He wanted it to be true. But trusting wasn’t in his nature; it never had been. “Prove that if I come with you I’m not sentencing my brother to die.”

“I am your brother,” Thor said, “and I’m not dead. And if you come with me, I am going to spend the rest of our lives loving you the way we never dared to let ourselves before.”

“ _Thor_ ,” Loki exhaled, his eyes wide, and he clutched onto Thor’s arms as well. He looked to the hangar at his Thor, dirty and bloody and broken, helpless, and then back to this careworn stranger who might just possibly be the same person. “Is this some fit of madness? Am I dreaming?”

“You’re about to go out there,” Thor said, low and shaky, “and you will name yourself Odinson and swear your undying fidelity. And then Thanos will snap your neck. Do you know what it did to me, to see you die for the third time and be powerless to stop it yet again? I was empty afterwards, consumed with nothing but the thought of revenge, and it was that in the end that helped us defeat him. Which is why you need to send a double to die. It will hurt me just as much, but it will get me here, don’t you understand? Here, saving you. This is the only thing I could think of, the only way for us to both defeat Thanos and for me to get you back...to steal back this one tiny moment, right here…”

It was all too much for Loki to fully take in, too much left unexplained, but this Thor had just spoken the words that Loki had been planning to say: _“I, Loki, Prince of Asgard, Odinson, the rightful King of Jotunheim, God of Mischief, do hereby pledge to you my undying fidelity—”_ He had been hoping against hope that Thor would realize the words were for him. Maybe he would. Had? Loki’s resolve was crumbling. He wanted to go with this Thor so badly. And yet...

Loki shook his head as if he could straighten out his jumbled thoughts by knocking them around. 

“Strange just let you have the Time Stone?”

“No,” Thor said roughly. “He didn’t. I’m only borrowing it.” Thor reached under his collar and pulled out the necklace that Loki had seen around Strange’s neck in New York. The stone in the center of it glowed a brilliant green.

Loki huffed out a tiny laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Borrowing?”

Thor’s eyes softened ruefully. “Well. He didn’t want me to come because I might mess everything up and make Thanos win. But I told him that we’d already won, so if I went back and got you it wouldn’t matter, because it had already happened...and then we started arguing about the Norns and the nature of fate and determinism…”

Loki scoffed and Thor smiled with no small amount of self deprecation.

“And then I may have threatened him,” Thor continued, “with an axe...I have a new one, by the way, from Nidavellir, it’s right over there…”

With every word from his lips, Loki’s heart grew lighter and lighter. This foolish plan was his brother through and through, down to arguing about fate and threatening Infinity Stone wielding wizards with physical violence.

“Can I touch it?” Loki asked. Thor held the necklace towards him and Loki laid his hand on it. A frisson ran through him. He’d been in possession of two Infinity Stone in his meager life, and now he was undeniably holding a third. “Oh,” he said. “It’s real.”

“It is,” Thor said, gently taking it from Loki’s hand and tucking it back under his collar, his armor snuffing the eerie green glow.

“Even if all this is true, how do you know that I wished to be loved the way you describe?” Loki lingered on the word ‘loved,’ his tongue reluctant to say it. It was true, of course it was, but he had never admitted it out loud to anyone before, and especially not to Thor.

“We’ve been dancing around it for centuries,” Thor said softly. “Surely you don’t deny it.”

Loki closed his eyes and took Thor’s hands. Felt him, solid and warm. Breathed in the scent of him, so familiar he would recognize it anywhere. 

“Tell me something,” Loki said instead of answering Thor. “Something I don’t know that only you could know the answer to. Something that would surprise me.”

He glanced back over at the hangar. A sense of urgency still hung around them even though time was frozen. He felt like they needed to resolve this quickly.

“I don’t know, I just—it’s me!” Thor grunted in frustration and fell silent for a moment as he thought. “After you ruined my coronation, you goaded me into going to Jotunheim, but the truth is I knew you were doing it and I went along with it anyway.”

“What? Why?”

“I was angry, and I wanted something to hit, and...I knew there was some reason you wanted me to go even though I didn’t know what the reason was, but I figured that as long as you were with me that everything would work out just fine. I would have followed you anywhere. I still would.”

“Oh,” Loki said, a bit faintly.

“Please follow me now,” Thor said, pleading. He brought their clasped hands up in front of him. “I don’t know what to say that will convince you. I miss you. I don’t want to live without you. I’ve done it three times now and I hate it. We’re not meant to be apart. If you don’t come with me...life holds little appeal for me going forward.”

Loki had been so sure that Thor would be fine without him, so willing to give himself as a trade and say he’d made a good deal, but the evidence to the contrary stood before him now.

“Oh, you are cruel,” Loki breathed. “Here I am, about to die to save you. And yet you ask me to live to save you instead. How am I supposed to refuse?”

Thor’s eyes bored into him. He slid one hand around Loki’s neck, cupped it and thumbed roughly at his jaw. The touch was so familiar and wanted that Loki was leaning into it before he even knew what he was doing. He wasn’t sure who moved first, Thor tugging on his neck or Loki dragging Thor closer; maybe they moved as one, both leading and both following. All Loki knew for certain was that a question he’d had his whole life was being answered—what his brother’s lips felt like against his own. And oh, they were sweet, and soft, and fierce, and in that moment Loki knew that he was lost; that if this was a trap it was one he’d walk into willingly; that he wished nothing else but the chance to have this again, even just once more.

“Oh,” Loki whispered again when they pulled apart, and Thor exhaled shakily, and they smiled tremulously at each other. He couldn’t seem to make his voice work above a whisper. “How is it that I decide to die, and a moment later you appear before me offering salvation and my heart’s deepest desire both, when I have done nothing to earn either?” 

“Brother,” Thor said, his brows drawn up. They stared helplessly into each other’s eyes for a moment. There was no doubt left in Loki’s mind that this _was_ his brother, in truth. But now the cold reality was crashing down, which was that Thor’s plan was utterly ridiculous, and that he was going to die anyway, and it would all be for nothing.

“I believe you, but your plan won’t work,” Loki said shakily. For the first time, he wanted to cry. “I can’t hold a double unless I’m nearby, and certainly not across time. We’d have to stay here. And it won’t matter anyway, because a double won’t fool Thanos. They’re just illusions.”

“I know,” Thor said. “I have something to help, actually. Strange had so many useful things that he just left lying around.”

“Lying around?” Loki said, feeling a thread of hysterical laughter threaten to bubble up.

Thor was fishing around in one of his belt pouches and pulled out a small ring carved from shining black obsidian. He held it out to Loki, his eyes hopeful. 

“Ohh,” Loki said, and a bit of the laughter broke free, a high little half giggle. “It’s Athar’s Ring of Corporeality.”

“To make your double physical.”

“Oh, Thor.”

Loki took the ring from him with trembling fingers. His sweet, clever brother.

“Can you do it?” Thor asked, his voice unsteady.

Loki held the ring up and looked at it. Looked at this new Thor, whose eyes were shining with hope and love strong enough to send him back through time itself.

“What if it doesn’t happen the same way?” Loki whispered. “What if I send my double out and I don’t say and do the things I said the last time? What if it all goes wrong?”

“It won’t,” Thor said. “And if it does I’ll rewind time again. And again. Until we get it right.”

“You’d rewrite the universe for me.” Loki’s voice broke on the last word. He couldn’t breathe properly.

“I’ve come to realize that there are precious few things I wouldn’t do for you.”

Loki found himself falling into Thor’s arms again. He had a brief mad thought that maybe they could just stay here, in this time between time, until they’d had their fill of each other and stolen back enough moments for themselves to make up for the ones that had been taken from them.

“I’ll do it,” Loki said when they finally let go of each other. “I’m a fool, but I’ll do it.”

Thor’s smile and the warm hand cupping his cheek almost made anything that might go wrong seem worth it.

“Tell me exactly how it went last time,” Loki said.

*

It didn’t take long for Loki to get the story all straight. If everything went to plan, he would send his double out, run it through its little song and dance, Thanos would kill it, and then Thor would carry them away with the Bifrost back to Earth and bring them forward in time six months. Loki could only hope that his brother’s plans fared better than his ever had. He still felt sick about it, but Thor’s faith in it and him was contagious, and he found himself growing nervously optimistic.

Loki spun a double. Focusing his concentration, he drew his power through the ring that Thor had supplied him and let it flow into the illusion. He could feel it taking physical shape.

“Go touch it,” he told Thor. “Make sure it worked.”

Thor walked up and poked the double in the chest. He turned back, smiling.

“Are you ready?”

They crouched behind some wreckage, Thor’s right hand in Loki’s left. Thor drew the necklace holding the Time Stone out of his armor and closed his eyes. Abruptly the world around them came back to life. Flames began leaping again, ash falling. The Tesseract broke with a blue shockwave.

Loki’s double strode forth confidently and spoke. “If I might interject…”

It was unnerving to watch. The Thor out there was still Thor. His Thor. And yet, at the same time Loki felt an odd detachment; like this was something that had happened in the past already for him as well, and that he was simply watching a play—here is where Loki of Asgard dies, and here is where his golden brother mourns for him.

Thor trembled next to him when the knife materialized in the double’s hand, and squeezed his eyes shut.

“I can’t bear to look again,” Thor whispered, turning his face into Loki’s shoulder. Loki cradled Thor’s head in his hand and stroked his shaggy hair. This had to work. _Please_ , he begged the universe, _I know I don’t deserve anything, but he does. Please_.

Loki watched with morbid fascination as Thanos lifted the double by the neck. Loki made its legs kick, its eyes fill up with blood. That was a nice touch, he thought. Watched as Thanos flung the double to the ground. Took a certain shameful thrill in seeing the other Thor’s anguish at his apparent death.

“Did it work?” Thor asked. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet.

“I think so,” Loki whispered, still stroking Thor’s hair; he put his other arm around Thor’s shoulders and squeezed. “ _Norns_ , I think it worked.”

Thor put his arms around Loki’s waist and they clung to each other. Loki realized Thor was crying. In a daze, Loki watched as Thanos opened a portal using the Space Stone, and he and his children disappeared through it. He ached to go to the other Thor, the one out in the hangar who was now clawing his way across the floor to the double’s body. For all that Loki took pleasure in being mourned, he wanted to appear and tell the other Thor that it had all been a ruse, spare him this bit of pain. He didn’t realize he was moving until Thor stopped him.

“Don’t,” Thor said quietly, blinking back his tears. “Leave me in my grief. It’s the only way.”

“But—”

“Brother,” Thor said. “It’s time to go.” He stood and held out his hand. Loki glanced once more back at the other Thor clawing his way over to the fake Loki on the floor of the hangar. Old habits and his despicably tender heart begged him not to leave his brother this way. The ship began to shake alarmingly, wracked by the vestiges of the Power Stone that Thanos had left behind.

“Won’t you die when the ship explodes?” Loki asked.

“I didn’t last time,” Thor said.

“But how do you know?” Loki asked. “What if this is where it goes wrong? What if all we’ve done is kill you as well? Or what if I was five seconds slower this time than I was last time, and that five seconds changes the outcome of everything and you don’t defeat him? How can we leave? _Thor_.”

Loki was starting to get dizzy and short of breath. Thor’s hands were heavy and grounding on his shoulders.

“Time Stone, remember?” he said. “If it’s gone wrong, we’ll fix it together.”

Loki looked up into Thor’s eyes, one blue and one brown. He knew now the name of that weight he’d seen on Thor’s shoulders when he first appeared. It was the same weight that Loki would have carried on his had Thor died instead—the terrible burden of being a half without a whole. Only now Loki was still alive instead of dead on the floor of a spaceship and they had the chance to finally be together, really together, in a way that had been impossible in their old lives. All he was being asked to do was follow his brother, who had altered the flow of time itself just for the smallest chance to save him, and who Loki loved more dearly than anyone else in the universe.

Loki put his hand in Thor’s and let him draw him to his feet. Thor’s last word sat lightly in his breast. _Together_.

Thor held out his hand and called his new axe to him.

“Let’s go home,” Thor said.

“And where is that?”

Thor took Loki’s hand and put it on his cheek, brought their foreheads together for a brief touch.

“Wherever I’m with you.”

Loki closed his eyes as the ship exploded around them, and when he opened them the world had changed entirely. There was grass, and sky, and the sun was shining, and Thor was smiling, which were almost the same thing. Loki only had to move his mouth an inch to kiss Thor. He did, and his soul sang.

“The sun is shining,” Thor said, beaming. “You said—”

“I know,” Loki said, and kissed Thor again. “I know,” he said over and over again, kissing Thor between each one, torn between laughter and relieved tears. Thor’s arms tightened around his waist until Loki swooned backwards, only Thor’s strength holding him up. Loki never wanted to stop kissing him for as long as he lived.

They broke apart to a chorus of wolf whistles.

As Loki regained his senses he realized they were in Central Park, in the same place that they’d used the Tesseract to go back to Asgard, and that an entire small crowd of mortals had gathered around them.

“Well _this_ is going to be on Youtube,” Thor murmured, laughter in his voice.

“What’s a Youtube?” Loki asked.

“I’ll show you,” Thor said, throwing his arm around Loki’s shoulder and nuzzling into his cheek. “I’ll show you everything. It all looks just as I left it. We did it, brother, I really think we did it. Let’s go give this necklace back to that wizard and find out for sure.”

“And then?” Loki asked, putting his own arm around Thor’s waist and letting Thor start to lead him down the sidewalk.

“And then... the rest of our lives.”

A simple untainted happiness welled up in Loki’s heart for the first time that he could remember, and a tiny flicker of something that he dared to call hope. He squeezed Thor’s waist and smiled.

“I’m keeping that ring, though.”

**Author's Note:**

> just in case you were worried, they go to Strange's and give the Time Stone back and find out that Thor's amazingly stupid plan did actually work, somehow, probably because Thor was right when he was arguing with Strange about the nature of determinism (and also the Norns owe him one); Thanos is dead and all the dusted souls are back and Thor and Loki get to live in incestuous bliss for the rest of their lives amen


End file.
